Monday, August 10, 2009

Even in Canada, eh?

I sometimes am accused of "ruining" my students by making them see things (i.e. discrimination) on television and in the media that they can no longer ignore. It seems now that I am doing something similar for some readers. (Haha--my feminist agenda is well on its way!!)Yes a dear reader sent me an article which mentioned many times the boyfriends and male partners/husbands of members of the Canadian women's hockey team.I don't know why I think Canada is immune to patriarchy but I seem to hold it (you know, the whole country basically) to higher standards.But this article from The Canadian Press was pretty blatant in its attempt to heterosexualize women's ice hockey. Perhaps it would have been more subtle if it hadn't started out like this:Goaltender Kim St. Pierre will see her boyfriend a lot less now.I am not usually one to do the men/women comparison because I often find it reductionist but in this situation one of the first things I thought of--after, of course, I sighed at the obvious fear of lesbians all over this article--was "I cannot imagine any article about men's hockey talking about a player being away from his girlfriend as he prepared for the Olympic games."The topic of the article is the sacrifice many of the women are making. And the sacrifice is being away from family, primarily love interests, but also children. In other words the women who are mentioned in the article are straight. And as I said, the message is not really that subtle--even for those who don't read my blog!